Numerous proposals have been made to provide a means to automatically dial telephone numbers, specifically those which are dialled frequently, without the necessity of manipulating a telephone dial or keypad. Apart from the saving of effort, in the present day, international dialling is lengthy and tedious if a number has to be repeatedly tried, and errors in dialling long telephone numbers can prove costly.
One form of automatic telephone dialler is the so-called repertory dialler in which entries of names are made on pages or an endless loop each name accompanied by a coding of the number. The device is adjusted to bring the desired name into the operative position and a sensor responds to the code to cause the number to be dialled. Examples of such devices are shown in British specification Nos. 1,290,953 (Pye TMC), 1,075,452 (G.E.C. Ltd.), 1,526,486 (Siemens) and 1,543,533 (Lane). Even using more modern technology such devices are limited in the number of numbers storable and require a pre-entry of each number that may be required to be dialled.
Other proposals have been concerned with apparatus generally intended to read telephone numbers encoded on a card or the like on which the number is represented, e.g. by punched holes or magnetically. Examples of such devices are shown in British specification Nos. 1,498,055 (Vendramini) and 1,324,448 (Harries), French specification No. 2,296,979 (Ts'ao) and German specification No. 2,817,729 (Card-O-Matic). All these devices require the user to carry about the appropriately coded card.
It has also been proposed to provide means, such as by coding against each entry in a telephone directory, whereby a hand-manipulatable sensor will read the code and this will be translated into the appropriate dialling pulses. Such a system is broadly outlined in British patent specification No. 989,112 (Siemens). A hand-manipulatable sensor element for reading an optically or magnetically coded telephone number of a support medium is described in specification No. 2,036,508 (S.I.M.E. Brondi S.p.A.). A very similar system is described in British specification No. 2,063,010 (S.T.C.) which was published on May 28, 1981. Both these latter disclosures are in highly generalized terms. Neither describes, in our opinion, a practicable implementation that would lead to consistent or accurate dialling or even discloses a practicable form of coding. Reference may also be made to German Offenlegunschrift No. 2,939,196 (Siemens) which also describes a system in which a hand-manipulatable sensor may be used to input telephone numbers represented in a form suitable for automatic character recognition. As with the two disclosures above-mentioned, there is a lack of detail as to any form of practical implementation.
It may thus be seen from the above-mentioned specifications that the desirability of some automatic system for dialling telephone numbers has been well-recognised and the subject of much activity over many years. The idea of using a hand-held device as a read-in sensor has been proposed but there is a gulf between proposing the idea and implementing it which has not so far been bridged. To our knowledge, there is no system of this kind currently available in the market place.